Trump kills the DACA Dream

Donald Trump yesterday rescinded President Obama’s DACA policy that let undocumented kids who arrived in the US before the age of 16 to apply for two-year renewable amnesty. Trump is now pulling the plug on DACA, leaving the kids in limbo, while punting the entire issue to Congress.

In a nutshell, it’s not clear that a GOP Congress is going to fix this, even though the polls show even a majority of Republicans favor keeping the “Dreamers” here. The problem is congressional conservatives, who will certainly try to tie any DACA compromise to the billions Trump wants for his racist Mexico wall and to even worse anti-immigrant legislation. I just don’t have a lot of confidence in the GOP Congress to fix this, but we’ll see.

As for the courts, a lot of people think Obama’s policy won’t survive a review at the Supreme Court. That means that even if Trump were to keep DACA, the GOP attorneys-general who have been suing to stop the policy, might be able to get the courts to strike it down.

The other topic Cliff and I discuss quite a bit in today’s podcast is the 2018 election, and whether Democrats have a chance at taking back the Senate. Cliff thinks there’s a chance that the country’s collective anger at Trump, and GOP extremism overall, might just swing the Senate at least.

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John AravosisFollow me on Twitter: @aravosis | @americablog | @americabloggay | Facebook | Instagram | Google+ | LinkedIn. John Aravosis is the Executive Editor of AMERICAblog, which he founded in 2004. He has a joint law degree (JD) and masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown; and has worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and as a stringer for the Economist. He is a frequent TV pundit, having appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline, AM Joy & Reliable Sources, among others. John lives in Washington, DC. John's article archive.